


The Whirlwind in the Thorn Tree

by norgbelulah



Series: The Whirlwind [1]
Category: Justified
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, Big Bang Challenge, Families of Choice, Fever, Multi, OT3, Post-Apocalypse, Undead, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-26
Updated: 2012-10-26
Packaged: 2017-11-17 02:14:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/546509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/norgbelulah/pseuds/norgbelulah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nearly a year after the dead rise inexplicably from their graves, the courthouse compound inside Lexington falls and Loretta McCready is left with just one place to go, back home to Harlan. She's heard rumors of a place there run by the King and Queen of Harlan County, but it's not until she runs into Raylan Givens on the road down that she ever kids herself she might make it. Now the question becomes, just what will they find there?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the undeadbigbang.
> 
> [Art is here](http://someotherstorm.livejournal.com/3228.html) by someotherstorm.
> 
> Thanks to betas engage_protocol, thornfield_girl, and someotherstorm, ILU ladies.

[ ](http://norgbelulah.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/765/30664)

 

 

“You’re lookin’ for Boyd, then?”

His tone is curt, his voice rough and unused, but he doesn’t look or sound angry. His frown is deep, but it seems carved that way now, into his face. It looks as though he hasn’t smiled in months, though she remembers so clearly how his grin would spread for just about anything.

She supposes no one smiles quite as often as they used to these days.

“I heard some things,” she shrugs, never wanting to look too eager for anything lately. “And I saw him once, with her, that time at Mags’ place. I thought... he might remember me, let me in. It’s easier, you know, with people.”

His expression doesn’t change. “It can be.”

“You’re goin’ too?”

He doesn’t really answer, so much as he just starts walking in that direction.

 

[ ](http://norgbelulah.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/765/29537)

It hasn't been quite a year since the dead climbed out of their graves.

It’s become one of those things, like September 11th and the Kennedy assassination. _Where were you when you saw one first?_

Loretta was in school. Junior year in a pottery class, early in the morning. The throwing wheel was near a window and the school itself was built on the edge of a cemetery. She didn’t see _one_ for the first time so much as she saw an army, all in faded black suits and pearls and moldy, wilted flowers.

They were moaning. She saw one a tear a small child apart before everyone else started screaming.

 

She thinks he wasn’t in Lexington the whole time.

People don’t move much now, the roads are too dangerous. She started out in the school, Henry Clay High School became her first compound. They brought in the army, reserve troops, though not as many as they needed, who brought the parents in, the ones that could make it. Mrs. Percy didn’t.

It was Glen, poor, grieving Glen, limping, carrying two of the babies with him. Not his children, never his, but ones he loved anyway. He would never say how she died. When Loretta asked as she took little Kyle off him, he only shook his head, tears still rolling.

They stayed there for a month, hiding in the basement, with the boiler and the shop machines, listening to the dead pound on their barricaded doors. They had bedrolls--Loretta still carries hers--and canned food and a radio that played stilted newscasts about bombs on larger cities and evacuations that can’t save everyone.

When Henry Clay is overrun, she could only save one of the babies. Glen had the other and they got him, with their gnashing, rotten teeth, and rolling sunken eyes, and clawing, grasping bones. They ran him over like they ran over the compound and the child fell with him. She and Kyle were two of a handful to make it to the courthouse.

Loretta asked after Raylan when she got there, but someone told her he’d been on the road when they rose. No one had seen him. The cell phone towers don’t work anymore, and power lines are down everywhere. They’d had radio word he was in Louisville. The black lady Marshal with the kind face gave Kyle a candy bar and told her he was looking after his family. Loretta hadn’t known he had one.

They stayed in the courthouse for six months and watched it turn into an infirmary. There were doctors there, people who knew how to keep out disease, but they couldn’t do it, not with death at their door from outside and in. Not with too many mouths and not enough medicine and pipes bursting and sewers overflowing underneath them.

When they first came, some people were saying, go to the country, out in the hills. There's less of them there, easier to hole up, easier to run. The city was death. Loretta didn't believe them. She found out later, but she knew she could never have gone all the way home, not with a child to pull behind her.

She doesn’t have him now. She left him on a funeral pyre with the other deceased just weeks ago. The older Marshal she remembered from the time Raylan brought her in was among them, too, taken by fever of one kind or another.

The dead were growing too many in Lexington, it was on everyone's lips to escape, get out while they still had their lives. Some were too frightened or too sick to go, but not Loretta and she’d heard things.

Things about big compounds set up in the hills, mile high fences around reams of land where people farmed and cooked and lived like real people and kept the dead out too. She heard things about one in Harlan, set up by a brother and sister, or man and his wife, or run by them anyway. She heard the man was once a preacher, or spoke like one anyway, that he was a nazi too.

She’s pretty sure they’re talking about Boyd Crowder, but the people who told her only called him the King of Harlan County.

When the compound disbanded, too many sick, not enough guns or men who could stand, some went east, some west or north. Loretta turned south with two others, an older man from out near Corbin, looking for his daughters, and a boy whose story she never heard and whose balls she had to threaten with her knife to get him to stop trying to touch her in her sleep.

The dead got the boy first, in the night, asleep on watch, the man second, but only after he’d thrown her his revolver and told her not to stop running. She ducked under a staggering, moaning old woman and breezed past two or three more, through the tearing claws of their hands. She slipped through countless dead, and lost track of how long she’d been running.

Until she ran into the path of Raylan’s gun. He dispatched the three that were still after her with a hunting rifle and a cool expression, but something burning hot behind his eyes.

“Loretta McCready,” he said her name like one or the other of them must have forgotten it. He didn’t smile.

 

She’d given up hope on him, so much she can’t tell now, as they walk along the road, if he’s real.

She sort of wants to touch him, but she can tell that wouldn’t be welcome. He doesn’t really look at her, sets his pace just a step in front, like he’s taking point in a group much larger.

His clothes are in good repair, about the same kind and style she used to see him in when they saw each other more. His hair is the same though a little more gray, from what she can see of the back of his head, under the hat which is exactly the same. She’s almost relieved about that.

He carries four guns: a rifle slung across his back, two handguns, one his service weapon that she distinctly remembers the sound of, the other of similar make, and a sawed off slung lower than his hips that sways from side to side when he walks. There’s weight in his jacket, so she assumes he’s got a mag or two hidden inside. She doesn’t know where he keeps the shells.

“Lexington’s a shit show,” she tells him. She knows how much people who travel value the news. “It’s just the sick now. The dying and the dead.”

He doesn’t turn his head. “I was there. Saw it.”

“Must’ve been straight after we left,” she says.

“I expect so.”

She wonders if he knows how much he’s meant to her, with everything he’d done to help her, with her Daddy and Mags, and even if all that money’s worthless now. He’d helped her so much. She can’t believe she just ran into him.

She wants to ask him so many questions, where’s he’s been, what he’s seen, what’s the news he’s heard. But his eyes are so distant and his smile’s disappeared and she doesn’t think he’d like it.

He cleans his weapons ritually at night next to their small fire, disassembling only one at a time, loading each back up carefully and setting it aside. She follows suit, watching the way he does it.

She’d been shown how, first by her daddy, then by Dickie on orders from Mags. Tim, the sharpshooter marshal who caught a stray bullet and died of infection, showed her how to clean and load up his rifle, in case she ever got her hands on one. But all she has now is another man’s revolver and fewer bullets than she’d like.

She isn’t sure if he’s paying attention until he looks up from his work as she’s going about hers and says, “Yer almost out of solvent,” and passes his over to her. She takes it with a smile he doesn’t return and he says, “It’s hard to come by, but that don’t mean you should skimp. I know a place we might find it on our way down.”

“Okay,” she tells him and goes back to cleaning.

She can tell he’s slowing his pace for her. Once, she could walk all day through daddy’s crop, but she’s been inside, cooped up for months and food’s grown scarce. She can’t walk so fast or so far as she wants to, but he always waits for her.

He does some hunting when he can, and they scavenge the rest of the time, picking through the houses of the dead.

He saves all the best things for her. She wants to tell him, “no,” opens her mouth to do so on more than one occasion, but he just looks at her, unsmiling, and words fail her. She eats what he puts in front of her and she tries to press ahead when he’ll let her.

They walk for more than a week and she hates that she’s slowing him down. “You’d be there by now,” she says when they camp too early. She’s walked this highway before, she knows.

His mouth tightens into a thin line, but he doesn’t reply, so she can’t argue anymore.

That night it’s cold, colder than it’s been so far, though she shouldn’t be surprised since they’re into September now. They can’t have a fire, because those attract the dead, which makes no sense because they burn like any other corpse, but Loretta guesses that fire to them means someone started it, cultivated it. It means life.

So, they shiver until Loretta can’t stand it anymore and slips out of her bedroll, dragging it over to his. He’s awake and looking up at her with grave eyes. She’s praying it’s not weird. That’s not, not ever what she wanted.

She kneels down next to him and whispers, with more desperation than she intends, “I just never wanted to be a burden.”

He tugs her down and pulls her close as she wraps herself in the bedroll again and pushes up next to him. Together, they are warm. “You’re not,” he says simply, very soft. “I wouldn’t leave you behind.”

She lets a tear slip silently and sleeps the night through.

 

[ ](http://norgbelulah.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/765/29727)

They walk for two more days.

They stop once to pick up the solvent Raylan mentioned and a few other supplies at an old range just on the other side of the Bennett county line. They pick up all the bullets they can find too, even ones for which they have no weapons. Raylan says, “May be valuable in trade, once we get in with Boyd.”

She thinks it’s interesting there’s no doubt in his mind that they’ll get in. She’s heard, with all the people leaving the cities, some of the countryside compounds have shut their gates for good. She only ever thought she had a fifty-fifty chance on convincing the Crowders she’d be worth the food they’d have to feed her, but Raylan, he’s absolutely sure.

He also seems to know exactly where he’s going.

“How do you know where it is?” she finally asks as he turns them off the state road.

“I got a hunch,” he answers simply.

His rifle is out. He’s said before the dead like to hide in the trees. They haven’t seen many since they were just outside of Lexington. She’s not really surprised, no population means no prey. The people in these parts have died or gone on to safer places, the Harlan compound maybe, or another she thought she’d heard of over the line into Virginia or Tennessee.

She wonders if the dead are growing hungry, what with so little to sustain them. She wonders if they’d just die off if people kept away long enough. She doesn’t ask Raylan. No one ever knew anything that wasn’t rumor or fear-mongering or government lies.

There were never any real answers and Loretta knows, has always known, she doesn’t need them. Not like she needs more bullets, or new shoes pretty soon, or a heavier coat when the cold really sets in.

Raylan shoots a desiccated old man chewing on a squirrel near a slow moving river. They must be close because when the dead man drops and the shot cracks through the holler, Raylan says, “They’ll be watching for us.” And they walk on.

Loretta has never been to Noble’s Holler. But it doesn't take her long to figure, once they get to the bridge. The land below it is pretty steep and the stream at the bottom narrow, but it wouldn’t be unscalable. The tall fence they’ve erected around the perimeter of the holler would make it easy for someone with a lot of ammo and a lot more patience to pick off the dead as they approach.

There are four men on the wall at the end of the bridge to the holler. As Raylan and Loretta cross and reach the center she can hear one shout down to others inside, “A man in a hat and a girl,” followed by, “yeah, a fuckin’ cowboy hat.”

She looks over at Raylan, whose expression doesn’t change at all as he watches the man closest to them and the man watches back, both hard-eyed with their hands on their rifles. It doesn’t seem as though any of them recognize him and they aren’t anybody that Loretta’s ever seen. This place must have got people from all over and she hasn’t been home in so long.

They wait outside for a few minutes, but it feels like an hour. Loretta figits, suddenly nervous that they’re too full, or they’re all sick, or they just won’t want them.

She’s been telling herself it’s better with people, but what if these people aren’t good? What if they’re like Mags? Or Dickie? Or worse? She doesn’t know anything about Boyd Crowder, not anything she readily believes.

“Loretta,” Raylan says suddenly. He hasn’t called her by her name since the first day, when she thought he sounded like he'd forgotten it.

She looks at him.

He’s looking hard at her now, just the same way he was looking at that man, but he says quietly so they don’t hear, “When we get in, only talk if they ask you questions and do exactly as I say. You’re with me. No matter what, all right?”

It doesn’t make her feel any better.

They open the gate only a moment later. Raylan gives up all his weapons and when they go to search her she hands one the revolver.

The men who bring them in don’t ask any questions. One, young-looking with a thin, reddish beard and almost kind eyes, tells them they’re going into quarantine to wash up against vermin and sickness. “You look healthy enough,” he says, eyeing them. “A bit skinny, but who isn’t these days?”

Loretta eyes him right back and a man walking behind them says, “Neither coughed the whole time they stood outside. They were walkin’ strong too. Neither out of breath, though the girl’s a little slower.”

The young man asks, “You were inside for a long time?”

Raylan nods when she glances to the side, so she answers, “Mostly, since it began to just a... little while ago.” Raylan almost cracks a pleased smile.

“Anyone sick where you were?”

“Don’t answer that,” Raylan says quickly. The young man turns to him and frowns, suspicious, and Raylan raises his brows and tells him, “She ain’t answering no more questions unless it’s Boyd Crowder doin’ the askin’, and after that it’s on my say so.”

The young man’s eyes widen at the specific mention of Boyd, but he recovers quickly and asks, “She your daughter?”

Raylan just looks at him.

They are shown into a small room just off the wall, far away from any other people Loretta’s seen, though there’s a group gathering at the opening of a circle of small shack-like buildings that must be used as houses. There’s two tubs in the room half-way full of water. They are told to undress and wash themselves as thoroughly as possible. Their clothes will be taken, but given back if they’re found to be free of vermin. The young man shrugs then and adds, “Not so many clothes to spare we can give you extra.”

Neither she or Raylan respond. They turn away and do as their directed, both carefully averting their eyes from each other. Loretta feels her cheeks burn red, and she bites her lip, though the last thing in the world she wants to do is speak.

The water is cold and the soap is harsh, almost burning her skin, turning it just as red as her face. When they are finished, Raylan hands her a towel from off a table nearer to his tub and they sit on a bench along the far wall of the room and wait for whatever word might come back to them. Loretta silently prays for the return of her clothes.

It’s the young man that returns and he does have their clothes, but he smiles and sets them on the table then says, “I’m the doctor, ‘round here. Well, I was a med student, fourth year, at Pikeville. But I’m the closest we got, so I’m gonna look you both over before we let you in. And, mind, I let you through don’t mean you get to stay.”

He does Raylan first and Loretta looks at her hands the whole time. They talk quietly, the young man asking questions she can only half hear. Raylan’s answers are short and gruff, usually just “yes” or “no,” though he does say, “six months back,” in a pissed off tone when the doctor asks about a healed over bite on his forearm.

“You get a fever from it?” the doctor continues to inquire as though everything’s fine.

“Lasted two weeks,” Raylan says. “I was never near death.”

“You’re lucky.”

Raylan shrugs him off and walks to his clothes. “May I?” he asks flatly and the doctor nods.

He turns to Loretta next. She lets her towel slide off as he comes near. He touches her with a breezy, clinical air. She says no when he asks her about allergies, she comes from hardy stock. He smiles like he believes her and looks in her mouth and her ears, though he doesn’t have any tools of a real doctor. She tells him, “yes,” when he asks if her stomach is okay, because it’s much better than when she was just living on rice towards the end of the Lexington days.

He looks her all over and pauses long at the bruise on her thigh, big and yellowed, but turning towards the inside. “Someone touch you?” he asks and can’t keep a hold on his tone.

Raylan stiffens and she covers back up before he turns. “It weren’t him,” she tells the doctor, then growls at them both, “He near lost his balls and he didn’t get nothin’ in me.” And now she’s breathing hard and heat’s pricking at her eyes. “He _didn’t_.”

“Okay, honey,” the doctor says and lays his warm hand on her shoulder. She tries her best not to shake him off.

“Can I get dressed now?” she asks, eyes on the ground, voice not nearly strong enough.

“Yeah, go ahead,” he says and they pass her clothes to her.

She turns around and she hears the doctor leave as she pulls on her underwear and pants. All her clothes are threadbare, almost too short in the legs and arms, but too baggy now all around. She was never a big girl, but she’s lost weight and she knows it’s not in a good way.

She turns back around once she’s done and she looks Raylan up and down. He’s staring at her with a deep frown on his face. “They didn’t give your hat back,” she says, surprised.

“I expect some people wanted to get a look at it,” he replies.

She has absolutely no idea why that would be, but she can’t ask because the doctor returns. He’s got a funny expression on his face and he looks at Raylan very curiously. “You’re good to go. If you stay, I’ll look in on you again in a week or so. Make sure you’re both okay.”

“Thank you,” Loretta says, without thinking. It seems like the thing to do. Raylan says nothing.

“Come on,” he says and smiles at her again. “Everyone’s real interested.”

They walk out of the little quarantine shack nearly side by side, right behind the doctor, and along a path through patchy grass towards the ring of buildings ahead. Like before, there’s a gathering of people, maybe twenty, mostly women and a few children.

At the front of them, Loretta recognizes Ava Crowder, very tall and very thin, with Raylan’s hat in her hands. Her hair is cut shorter, above her shoulders now and not curled like she’d seen it the one time Loretta had laid eyes on her. She’s wearing a brown dress, worn, coming down past her knees, and a pair of men’s work boots. Her eyes are tired, but they widen and shine when she sees Raylan.

“Oh my God,” she cries and it travels fast across the yard, joy and awe in equal measure, like she’s saying a prayer, “ _Raylan_.” She races to him, like she can’t get there fast enough and they stop walking because she’s there, wrapping her arms tight around him, pressing her face into his shoulder. “Raylan, oh my God.”

His arms are slow to wrap around her in return, like he’s not even certain what’s happening, but they do eventually. He relaxes into her embrace more than Loretta’s seen him in the nearly two weeks they’ve been together. He presses his mouth to her hair and the lines through his brows soften. Loretta has to take a breath.

Ava pulls away after a long time and there are tears in her eyes that she dabs at, embarrassed. “Oh my God,” she says once more, softly, then settles her shoulders and calls back to a man at the edge of the crowd. “Jake, go back to the patch and get Boyd. He should be in with the okra or the tomatoes.”

Jake looks just a little frightened at the prospect. “He said--”

“I don’t care what he said,” Ava snaps back. “You tell him I said come now.”

Raylan’s still got a hand on her arm. He looks down at her, but doesn’t quite smile. “Don’t make him rush back just on account of me.”

“Shut up, Raylan,” Ava says, grinning, like she still can’t believe he’s there. She hands him back his hat and he sets it on his head. When he doesn’t smile at her, her face falls and she goes to touch him again, but he leans away and she doesn’t push it. “I’m so happy you’re alive,” she murmurs, “Raylan, I can’t tell you. So much--”

“I know, Ava,” he says. His tone is soft, but there’s a brittle edge to it and she frowns before she turns to Loretta.

“Is this...” she pauses.

“Loretta McCready, ma’am,” Loretta supplies. “It’s real nice to see you again. Though I don’t believe we were proper introduced or ever spoke before.”

Ava’s brows rise. “It seems we were not,” she says then smiles. “It’s nice to see another familiar face, Loretta.” She looks between them, doubtfully. “You were together a long time?”

Loretta’s about to reply, but Raylan shifts and she looks at him. His face is back to stone. “We’ll wait for Boyd to hash it out.”

Ava shuts her mouth with a click and squints her eyes like she’s trying to figure him out. “Fine,” she says. “Come inside. We’ll get you something to eat. Boyd won’t be long.”

They had eaten only early that morning and Loretta’s stomach rumbles at just the thought of a meal. Ava smiles at whatever look comes over her face and Loretta chances a smile back. Raylan just walks forward as Ava leads the way. She talks to a few of the ladies as she steps ahead then calls out to everyone, “There’ll be dinner in the Barbeque tonight. Gather your ration there, take it home if you like, or stay and hear Raylan’s news.”

Raylan tightens his jaw at her words. Loretta falls into step beside him, but can’t think of anything to say or ask. It’s then that Boyd Crowder rounds the corner. Raylan stops in his tracks.

“As I live and breathe,” Boyd says softly. “I thought my ears must be deceivin’ me.” He shakes his head and comes forward, through their crowd of people, almost as quickly as Ava had, though he slows when she catches his arm. “Praise the Lord, Raylan, you’re--”

“You startin’ that again?” Raylan asks with an even harder edge to his tone than he’d taken with Ava and Boyd stops as well.

There’s a space of about two feet between them and Boyd looks like he wants nothing more than to embrace him just as tightly as Ava. “It’s an expression,” he says softly, then raises his voice just a little as he continues, “Though all here are welcome to worship in whatever way they please. Just because the government collapsed, Raylan, doesn’t mean this ain’t America.”

Raylan’s mouth twists, like he’s swallowed something not to his taste. Ava pulls at Boyd’s arm. “Raylan’s companion, baby,” she says, looking at Loretta. “It’s Walt McCready’s girl. The one was stayin’ at Mags’ those years ago.”

Boyd looks over at her and his grin is almost blinding. He’s not so tall as she remembers, but just as tall as Raylan. His skin is far more tan, probably from working in the fields or whatever they have here, and he’s wearing only a white, though stained with dirt, undershirt and a pair of jeans. His hair is cut short, near his scalp, but not quite buzzed and his eyes are real friendly. There is a big black swastika on his left shoulder.

“Another homecoming,” he says and Loretta smiles back. “Food in the Barbeque!” he yells then, raising his hands and about half the people assembled let out a cheer. The children run ahead.

Loretta glances at Raylan while they continue to follow the crowd. His eyes are stuck on Boyd, as he lags behind to talk to the young doctor, and they’re not mistrustful, but they are still dark and hard, his mouth a thin line.

Like nearly all the buildings in the compound, the Barbeque is made all of old wood, strong beams and flat boards along the walls. No trimmings, simple and real. It’s more like home than Loretta’s felt in a long while.

She assumes they call it the Barbecue because that’s what it was once, but it looks as though they’ve taken out a long, tall counter in favor of low tables and benches, still long, but so everyone can fit in. There’s an upraised platform off in the corner, where everyone can see. Maybe bands played there once, but now there’s two chairs and a small table.

Loretta realizes this is where they hold court. The King and Queen of Harlan wasn’t an exaggeration. She looks at them, walking through the crowd, talking to people, touching arms, shaking hands, exchanging smiles and laughter. The people like them, love them maybe, and everyone seems okay. She doesn’t think it’s an act either.

Ava comes back over to them from the kitchen area and lays a hand on Loretta’s shoulder. “Let me show y’all where to go, okay?”

She leads them through a small line to get plates and cutlery and a better helping of most things Loretta has had in a very long time. “We had a good crop of late cukes and there’s a load of tomatoes too,” Ava says, smiling at the older lady serving them. “Anna always puts it together real nice.”

They exchange more pleasantries and Loretta tries to keep smiling but, by the time they sit down, she’s too hungry to do anything but shove the food into her mouth. Ava and Boyd sit with them at the very end of one of the long tables, instead of high up on their throne, and when Loretta’s paying attention, between large bites, she sees them watching Raylan.

He’s eating too, but not with so much relish, and he hasn’t said anything since they came in from outside. He’s not really looking at them, though every once in awhile he looks around the room, maybe for familiar faces.

After a few minutes, and both of them are nearly finished eating, Boyd pushes his plate aside and looks earnestly at Raylan. He seems about to ask something, but Raylan beats him to it.

"Where's Johnny?"

Boyd blinks and leans back. His expression falls, like Ava’s did, as though he’s just realized how things are going to be. He answers readily anyway, "Dead. Just before. Turns out, Johnny held a grudge."

Raylan appears unsurprised. "Where's Limehouse?"

Boyd smiles softly. "Also dead. Turns out, he was helpin' Johnny."

Loretta's eyes widen as Raylan seems to be on the verge of smiling himself, but in a tense and bitter sort of way. "Didn't think he'd take too kindly to you running his holler, if he was still around."

Boyd grins like a challenge and Ava tilts her head. "Tell us your news, Raylan," she says, looking for a change of subject, but all traces of good humor leave him.

“Let’s give ‘em a drink first, baby,” Boyd says. “Shore up their strength.” He pours them both two fingers from a jar of shine, glancing first at Raylan then over to Loretta with a wink. “By my calculation, Miss Loretta, you should be about old enough to take it.”

“I’m seventeen for three months now, Mr. Crowder. It’s your ‘shine, so I’ll take your judgement as well,” she replies and he pushes it across the table to her, but she only takes a drink once Raylan does. Hers is a small sip to his open-mouthed gulp and she sucks back a cough, putting the jar down immediately. Nothing so strong as that shit has passed her lips in a few very long years. And even way back when she’d been around the stuff, she only ever had a taste once in a while.

Boyd smiles at her and says, “We don’t stand on ceremony here, honey. You call me Boyd.” She just nods instead of doing so right away, because Raylan shifts impatiently next to her and takes another drink. She can feel the ‘shine warming her belly already--she knows she’s got nothing like a tolerance--so she doesn’t take another.

“Where you comin’ from?” Boyd asks finally and his voice is pitched to carry. All other conversation in the room ceases though Loretta doesn’t turn to see if they’re all looking too.

Loretta looks at Raylan as he leans forward in his seat, planting his elbows on the table, again like a challenge right at Boyd. “Lexington,” he says simply, though his tone his hard, like he doesn’t want to answer and his expression is remote and cold.

“When did you leave there?”

“About ten days ago,” Raylan answers. “Loretta, you were, what, two days ahead?”

“Yes,” she says and they look between them in surprise. “We met on the road,” she adds and Raylan frowns like she shouldn’t have said that. She doesn’t know what difference it makes.

“That was fortunate,” Boyd says softly, though not like he doesn’t believe them. When Raylan doesn’t offer anything else he asks, impatient, “You were there the whole time then? Since the beginning.”

“No,” Raylan grinds out.

“Christ Almighty, Raylan, where else were you?” Ava cries suddenly and there’s something like fear in her expression. “What about--”

“Louisville,” he says before she can finish. He sighs and there’s pain behind his eyes. He pushes the rest out of his lungs in what seems like one breath. It’s more words than she’s heard him speak all in one string since they met up again. “I was on the road to Louisville when they rose up. I got there, and I stayed there ‘til summer. We were in the Downs. It was smart, for a while. Held a lot of people. Field in the middle for fresh air, exercise. Not too bad to fortify. They butchered almost all the horses for food. But the place was all wood and it burned. It burned all day and into the night and then they were on us. And I--”

He stops suddenly, closing his mouth with a click of teeth. He works his jaw like he’s trying not to beg them not to ask anything more. Ava and Boyd are staring at him in horror. Ava takes a quick breath and tries, “But did--”

“Everyone died, Ava,” Raylan says, hands now clutching the table. “ _Everyone_.”

“Surely there were other compounds,” Boyd says quietly.

“The Downs was the biggest, safest. They had others around, in schools, and hospitals, but they were all over-run eventually. It was the last. We would have been fine, except for all that wood, and the hay...” Raylan’s staring at the table. “There’s nothing in Louisville but death. Got to Lexington and found nothing but the same.”

Boyd, for the first time Loretta’s seen, seems at a loss for words. “Raylan, I am--”

“ _Don’t_ ,” Raylan growls and Boyd shuts his mouth. Ava’s hands are clutching Boyd’s.

Boyd blinks and his lips form a hard line. “Lexington fell then? We had news the Courthouse was all right, not very long ago.”

“It didn’t fall--” Loretta starts, but cuts herself off and looks at Raylan.

“Tell us, honey,” Ava urges, reaching her hands out to Loretta’s. “Some people here, they had kin, friends...”

Raylan nods after Boyd shoots him a glare. “Only answer what you want, Loretta,” Raylan says, voice flat and low. “You don’t owe them this story.”

Loretta turns now to the people around them, looks across the room and into their eyes. Some of the women are crying, not a few of the men too.

She thinks maybe she does and she wonders if that fire Raylan talked about burned up some part of himself, so now he’s just terrible memories and bitter feelings and the will to survive.

She wants to put a hand on him, like Ava’s got her fingers rubbing across Loretta’s own. It’s the most comforting touch she’s felt in a long time, even more than Raylan’s heat of the night before. She blinks back tears, knowing he’s wound so tight right now, he’d strike like a rattler if anything came at him, even a kind hand.

She wonders just who died in that fire and she thinks about her own dead as she begins to speak.

She tells them about foster care after Mags. A couple people murmur at the name, remembering the story. She tells them about Glen and the babies and Henry Clay High School and running to the Courthouse. “Not too much food,” she says. “And it wasn’t the dead got us, but the sickness. Half the rooms were quarantined. We burned bodies once a day by the end. We kept the dead out, but let death in anyways, ‘til no one could stay without it gettin’ them one way or another. Those who could, left, those who couldn’t, died. I walked south because I heard you were here, Boyd.”

He smiles at her, obviously not surprised to hear of his reputation.

“I remembered you an’ Miss Ava and I thought, maybe I could convince you to let me stay, if I made it to you. Then, I met Raylan and...” She looks over at him. His eyes are glued to the wall and she can’t even tell if he’s listening anymore. “He helped me a great deal. He knew just where to go.”

Ava squeezes Loretta’s hands again, real tight, then lets them go. “What were you gonna say, honey? To convince us?”

Loretta checks, but Raylan doesn’t give her any indication whether to answer. She doesn’t see the harm. They’re talking almost like staying is a given, but she knows she’d best present herself well regardless, as things like this can turn on a dime.

“I ain’t real strong right now, your doctor will tell you that.” Ava gives her an understanding smile. “But I’ll get stronger. I’m a good shot with a pistol and a rifle. I can cook or farm you tell me what to do. And I...”

She hesitates and Boyd’s brows come down just a bit. “Go on,” he says.

It’s her trump card, but she lays it on the table anyway. “Mags Bennett taught me how to ‘still. I know what’s in her apple pie.”

Boyd Crowder just laughs and it’s a kind of sound Loretta hasn’t heard in months.

 

After that, the dinner breaks up into a party of sorts. More ‘shine is passed around and Loretta allows herself another few sips. She talks to a few people who said they thought they had friends in the Courthouse. She doesn’t recognize any of the names. She knows no faces from before, when she lived in Harlan.

Raylan is in close conversation with Boyd. Still, there seems to be no question of their staying. Loretta knows it’s not always so easy. You’ve got to prove yourself, they tell you how long you have to do it. No one just gets in.

Ava walks through the crowd, looking over at them all the time. Loretta can see worry in her face, sadness too. She comes over to where Loretta’s leaning against the wall, trying to get some space now from the people. There’s a lot more laughter now, and it’s loud, a little hot too. Someone’s brought out a guitar. Loretta hasn’t heard one in so long.

“Your hair’s a bit long,” Ava says after a minute of just leaning. “All split up at the ends. I got some shears. I can cut it for you, if you want.”

Loretta smiles big, showing Ava all her teeth. She’s real pretty and her hair does look nice. “That’d be so nice,” she whispers. “I ain’t paid much ‘tention to it since...”

“I know, honey,” she says real soft. “We’ll do it tomorrow.”

“Okay,” she replies. The wall is solid behind her, holding her head up a bit too. She’s suddenly become real tired, but she shakes her head and says to Ava, because she feels like it’s important, “I thought it was gonna be so hard. But... you’re all so _nice_ and you--I don’t understand why Raylan...”

She trails off. She doesn’t even know what she meant to say.

Ava looks at her and sighs, “Honey, you gotta understand. Raylan’s not done very much in his life ‘cept lose the things he loves. Even before they rose. He’s always got a weight and now... we just gotta give him time.” She smiles sadly now and rubs a hand up and down Loretta’s arm, though it feels funny, like she’s barely being touched at all. “You too,” she says. “We all just need some time.”

Loretta nods and Ava, without saying anything, pulls her over to one of the benches. “You just stay right here. I’m gonna get you some water.”

Loretta wants to say she’s not thirsty, but she sits down and she’s even more tired than she was before, so she lays her head down on her arms and closes her eyes.

She doesn’t know how long she’s there before she hears them. Though she doesn’t stir, she does sigh. She’s so tired.

“...really made an impression on her.” Ava’s leaning over her, talking softly.

“Did that the first time a long time ago,” Raylan says, his words are more loose. She wonders if he got drunk too.

“She’s worried about you.”

Raylan’s hands are on her and she groans. “Come on, honey,” he says and doesn’t answer Ava.

“Everyone’s callin’ me that today,” she mumbles.

He pulls her up and into his arms. “I know,” he says into her ear and she feels a huff of breath against her cheek. She curls in towards his chest. He’s real warm.

“I’ll show you where to go,” Ava says with a sigh.

Loretta’s not sure how long they walk, but she rouses a little more when they come in from the outside. He crosses a small space, just a few steps, and lays her down on a bedroll on the floor.

She pushes her hair out of her face clumsily, looks up at him and frowns. “Where’ll you be?” she asks. She doesn’t like the idea of not sleeping near him.

“Just over there,” he says, pointing to a place across the dirt floor. “Don’t worry.” He doesn’t say anything for a minute, but his face is so much more soft when he’s looking at her. He draws his hand to the side of her cheek and says, “They said we can stay and you’ll stay here with me, if you want.”

Loretta can’t hold back her tears now, even if they’re tears of relief. She curls up around herself, turning her face from his hand and begins to sob in earnest. Raylan takes her up again in his arms, and she’s reminded of that dark night in Bennett Holler, outside the mine shaft where they threw her daddy.

“I ain’t gonna let you go now,” he whispers. “Not now.”

 

[ ](http://norgbelulah.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/765/30006)


	2. Chapter 2

 

Life in the Compound is better than Loretta thought it would be.

She imagined on the walk down, creeping her way in, dodging heavies, trying to stay out of people’s way, until she could make herself useful, become a fixture.

But she doesn’t have to do any of that. She’s welcomed like an old friend.

Ava washes her hair in a basin just on the floor of their little shack, with strong reassuring fingers against her scalp. She combs out Loretta’s too long hair carefully and asks her how she wants it. Loretta tries not to be too shy about it when she says, “Like yours.” Ava only smiles and starts cutting. When Raylan sees it, he smiles, too.

They have her help all over so everyone gets to know her real fast. They all smile and show her what to do. They run the place well, for not even having done it a full year.

From what she can gather, Ava and Boyd and a few others from the heart of Harlan couldn’t find a place to fortify and they scrambled from house to house, holler to holler, until they came to Noble’s Holler. The place was barricaded already, hard to reach. They negotiated with the residents still there, as many had already moved on after Limehouse’s death. It was an uneasy truce, but the Crowders had come with provisions, many of which they’d scavenged on their way and the Noble’s Holler folk were in need of food. Some of them still lived there, among the people, and took Boyd and Ava’s leadership as a pragmatic solution to the problem of competently running things.

Ava does everything Boyd does. They don’t stand on traditional roles. They don’t call each other husband and wife. Loretta’s not really sure they’re married. They’re obviously together, but no one calls her Mrs. Crowder, or Boyd’s wife, even if she’s just as in charge as he is.

They were, and are, the King and goddamn Queen. It’s not hard to see and it’s easy to follow the status quo.

She sees it with Raylan, too. He comes on, not surprisingly, as part, then head, of the security force, looking out for the dead, making sure the fortifications are maintained. But, he more or less turns into Boyd Crowder’s shadow.

They let him have his weapons back too.

He does everything Boyd asks him to. He follows orders to the letter. He never complains, hardly even speaks to anyone but Loretta, Ava, and Boyd himself. People trust him because Boyd trusts him, follows him with his eyes, touches him when he talks to him. Loretta sees Raylan balk at this, at first, but slowly become more comfortable, like a feral cat relearning a gentle hand.

When the dead try and come up the ravine, one or two at a time, or even small hordes of them--though nothing like what was in Lexington--Raylan dispatches them with the same cool efficiency he showed her in the woods. The first time, Loretta’s not there to see it, but everyone’s talking about it at dinner, that he got them each in one shot, that Boyd had to take the rifle from his hands. Ava gave the boy, Jake, a quelling look when she heard him spreading that last bit around.

Not so long after that, Loretta is woken in the night by a shout from Raylan, who rolls from his bed, looks around like everything he’s seeing is a horror, and fixes his eyes on the fire pit in the center of their little dirt floor.

“Raylan,” she calls, scrambling up.

But he doesn’t seem to hear her. He turns swiftly and seizes the basin they keep to wash their faces in the morning, full of icy water now that it’s late into October, and throws it onto the fire with a terrible moan of, “No.” He still doesn’t hear her calls, saying, “no,” again and again and sinking his head into shaking hands.

Loretta runs to Boyd and Ava’s. They are awake when she knocks on their door and she doesn’t know what she looks like, but Boyd’s eyes are grave when he asks her, “Do you know what that sound was?”

“It’s Raylan,” she tells him. “Please, will you--”

Before she can finish, he turns to Ava who looks to be putting on her coat. “Baby, let me take care of it,” he says. When she frowns he adds, “Please, Ava.” Loretta is already starting back when he finally leaves on his own. He’s got no shoes on and no coat.

When he comes into their room, Boyd slows almost to a stop, taking in the sight of Raylan’s blank eyes on the fire, the broken basin and soaked ashes and floor. He takes a breath and says, “Okay. Okay, Raylan,” who still doesn’t move. Boyd walks very slowly to his side and kneels carefully on the floor next to him. “Raylan,” he says softly, his hands coming up to pull Raylan’s from where he still clutching at his hair. “It’s Boyd, all right? It’s just me, Raylan. I’m right here.”

Raylan blinks and doesn’t move except for his hands that Boyd’s got a hold of. “ _Boyd_ ,” he whispers.

“Tell me, Raylan,” Boyd says.

He shakes his head and begins to rock back and forth, almost imperceptibly. “I can’t stop it,” he says and there’s so much grief in his face.

“Okay, Raylan,” Boyd murmurs. “I know. But... you know what we can do? We can build up this fire again, because I know you didn’t mean to put it out. We need it, Raylan. It’s cold now in the night, and we need it to keep us warm. Loretta, over there,” he says nodding at her, huddling fearfully on her bedroll, knees tucked up tight under her chin, “she needs it, Raylan. She’s real cold.”

Raylan finally turns his head and his eyes widen when he sees her, as though he’s just realized she was there, and his hands begin to shake again.

“It’s okay, Raylan,” Boyd says, just as soft. “We’re gonna build it up. Let’s get rid of some of this wet ash, all right?”

They sink their hands into the sodden blackness, Raylan only at Boyd’s urging, placing it in the broken shards of the basin. Raylan’s got a look on his face like he only half-suspects how it got broken, but he says nothing and Loretta watches them work in silence, trying so hard not to shiver.

They place some small pieces of wood just right to get the fire going, with some leaves left dried in a basket for kindling. Raylan’s fingers do not cooperate when he’s got the matches between them and the box in his palm. He clutches at them too hard and he’s shaking now like his whole body is rejecting it. Boyd shushes him and tries to take the box, but Raylan shakes his head and forces himself still.

“I’m sorry,” he says, once he finally strikes the match, and Loretta’s not sure who he’s talking to. Boyd’s hand is rubbing in circles across his back as he lights their small fire and she presses her face into her knees until she hears Raylan say, “Come here, honey.”

She crawls over to him, tugging her blanket with her across her shoulders, and presses herself to Raylan’s side. She sniffles, but she refuses to cry, and Raylan presses his mouth to the top of her head. Boyd watches them, eyes still grave.

Loretta’s got her head pillowed on Raylan’s knee sometime later, in and out of sleep, when she hears Boyd say, “We’re here for you, Raylan. Me an’ Ava. No matter what you decide, what you can or can’t give. I don’t ever want you to doubt that.”

Raylan sighs from above her. “You and Ava,” he says, like he doesn’t understand something.

“We’ll give you whatever you need.”

Loretta doesn’t hear if Raylan responds.

 

[ ](http://norgbelulah.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/765/29727)

 

The next morning, the are circles under both Raylan and Boyd’s eyes, but they both smile at Ava, Raylan less so than Boyd. He does let her give him a big hug when they meet and she whispers something to him that makes him close his eyes and pull her closer.

“I’m thinkin’ about it,” he tells her and she seems pleased.

Raylan still hardly smiles. But all the time his eyes are soft when he looks at them and the lines in his face have lost their depth. They're, all three, kind of funny about things with each other too.

Ava will walk just as close to Raylan as she does to Boyd. She won’t touch him in the same way, but she’s near to him regardless and he never backs off. She is the only person who can make him laugh, though Loretta never hears her tell him a joke, but Boyd makes him smile more than anyone else.

Loretta realizes, after a few nights when she wakes to find his bed empty, that when he can’t sleep he walks the perimeter with Boyd, or sits with them both around their tiny fire. She thinks they know she checks on him, but none of them says anything, or tells her not to.

Once, on a stormy night in November, one of them hears her outside and Boyd opens the door to say, “No sense walkin’ all the way back over there, honey. Get in here.” Raylan makes room for her with a tired smile and she falls asleep again next to him.

She wakes up in an extra bed roll in their place to the smell of oatmeal over the fire. Raylan and Boyd are both gone and Ava’s stirring the pot. She smiles at Loretta who smiles back shyly and asks, “Are you and Boyd his kin?” She doesn’t think she ever heard of such a connection, but now she’s not sure.

Ava shakes her head and pours out a bowl for them both. There’s dried berries in it, saved from the summer. “We’re all old friends,” she answers. “Of one kind or another.”

Loretta frowns as she comes over to sit. “Didn’t seem that way, from his side, when we first came here.”

“It’s never easy with him, at first,” Ava says with a soft smile. “It takes him a long time to get comfortable. I expect you learned that, on the road and after.”

Loretta nods thoughtfully and thinks about the three of them. “But you love him like family? You an’ Boyd, I mean.”

Ava smiles bigger now and tilts her head. “A lot like that, yeah.”

She looks down into her oatmeal and can’t hold back a tiny sigh. Ava wraps her arm around Loretta’s shoulder and says, “Don’t worry, honey. He’s got you and he’s got me and Boyd. Raylan’s gonna be fine. Now, eat up.”

 

Shortly after that, the late apples begin to fall and Boyd comes to their door with a crate of them and a copper pot ‘still. “Benny ‘stilled some this summer and it was okay,” he says smiling. “Hell, we been drinkin’ it for the past three months straight. But I’d like to see if you can back up your claim. You let Raylan or me know what else you need, all right?”

Loretta grins at him. “I hope you don’t mind my sayin’, I can’t believe you took so long to ask.”

He just ruffles her hair and goes off back to the fields.

She works hard at it for the next few days. She cuts up all the apples and makes her mash. She raids the kitchen at the Barbeque for sugar and the spices she remember Mags listing. She’s not real sure of proportions, but she guesses fairly close, she thinks, and she gets Raylan to bring her a barrel to store it. She makes as much as she can, then lets it age a bit.

Rumor gets around about what she’s up to and soon everyone starts asking her, some having had the stuff before, and others just hearing the legend--both of the stuff itself and the way Mags died, though Loretta knows it wasn’t Raylan or her who told the story.

She tells them all, “not yet,” with a secret smile that she hopes doesn’t look too much like Mags’.

They have a party when she finally tells them it’s ready.

It’s really a harvest party. Thanksgiving, sort of, but a week or two early. They have as much as Anna and Ava and Boyd think they can spare from the winter reserves and they eat a bunch and drink even more. They finish off the last of Benny’s ‘shine and break open Loretta’s Apple Pie with dessert.

The music, the doctor’s lone guitar, comes out not long after.

Loretta takes it easy because she doesn’t like letting things go and some days at the Compound she still feels like an outsider. There’s no one her age to talk to, all the kids too young, the other girls just too old and married anyway.

So she sips slow, pleased at how well it turned out, and sits with Raylan and Boyd. Ava is up and talking to people, swaying to the music, which is fast and upbeat. Loretta looks over at the doctor, whose smile is always wide and eyes clear and friendly. He winks at her and she looks down then up at Boyd’s smiling face. “What?” she says.

“Nothin’.” He smiles bigger and pours Raylan another round. It’s his third already.

Loretta frowns at Boyd and thinks he’s up to something. Raylan leans over and smiles big too at Loretta. She thinks Boyd’s plan might be all right.

“Honey, go on over there and get get me a couple of those molasses cookies Anna made for us, would you?” Boyd asks a minute later. Loretta eyes him suspiciously, but she goes, and when she returns he pulls her around to the other side of the table to sit next to him.

Raylan’s sitting on the opposite bench now, exposed to the crowd. He eyes Boyd like he just realized he should be suspicious too, though there’s more ‘shine now in his glass than when Loretta walked away, so she’s not really sure how he’s doing much of anything at the moment.

Before he can speak, Ava comes out of the crowd and wraps her hands around his arm. “Come dance with me, Raylan,” she says with a smile.

Some other couples are already out on the part of the floor they cleared of benches for that purpose, dancing two-steps and four-steps and whatever they know how to do. Ava tugs harder on Raylan’s arm, saying, “Please, Raylan.”

Raylan glances over at Boyd, frowning. “Don’ tell me you ain’ a dancer, Boyd. We both know tha’s a lie.” He’s holding on hard with his free hand to the table. Loretta thinks if Ava were to suddenly let go, he’d go flying in the other direction, he’s pulling back so hard.

Boyd puts his arm around Loretta’s shoulders. “Well, if I went dancin’ with my girl, Raylan, who would keep Miss Loretta here, company?”

Raylan stares at him. “I would.”

Boyd just grins. “You get her to yourself all the time, Raylan. Me an’ Loretta, we got to talk about Apple Pie, all right? You go on an’ dance with Ava.”

Raylan frowns again and says, “Why--why don’t you dance with Ava, an’ I’ll dance with Loretta.”

Boyd looks over at Loretta who says, playing along because she knows it’s expected, “I don’t feel much like dancin’, Raylan. You go on.”

She sees Raylan hesitate, still frowning, but beset on all sides, he lets go of the table and Ava pulls him up. He puts a finger in Boyd’s face and says, “You think you’re real smart, don’t you,” then finishes his drink and lets Ava pull him away.

His mouth is a thin line of concentration at first, though it softens as they continue to dance. He trips a bit on her feet, but she laughs at him and he smiles, despite himself.

Loretta leans on Boyd a little as he watches them and she wonders that now they both seem so much like family, really, than anything she’s had since her daddy. He puts his hand back up on her shoulder and she glances over to see his face, which is full of an easy pleasure.

“You wanna talk about the Apple Pie now, Boyd?” she asks.

“Hush now, child,” he murmurs and she laughs and takes another drink. The doctor starts playing the Tennessee Waltz and a few people begin to sing, joining in with his clear tenor. Boyd sits there and mouths the words, his eyes shining at Raylan and Ava slow-dancing together.

“You ain’t gonna sing?” she asks.

“You don’ wanna hear me sing, honey,” he says close to her ear, apparently unable to take his eyes off those two. “It’ll ruin the moment.”

She laughs and leans her head on her hand, propping her elbow on the table. “It can’t be that bad,” she says.

“Oh, it is,” he says, then grabs one of the cookies she brought over. “You eat one of these, okay?” Boyd tells her. “Or you’re gonna have a headache tomorrow an’ you won’t want to make us any more of this lovely concoction.”

He finishes his drink while she obediently eats the cookie, then he pulls her up for the end of the song. On their way to the dance floor, he murmurs to the doctor, “Last one, I think, Travis.” And the doctor nods.

Loretta lets out a little giggle as they make their way onto the dancefloor. Boyd puts a light hand on her waist and she almost trips into him. “What are you laughin’ at, girl?” he asks.

She keeps her hand over her mouth instead of putting it on his shoulder, letting it slip just a little to say, “I didn’t know what his first name was.”

At Boyd’s surprised look, she blurts out, “I was just callin’ him the doctor in my head.”

He pulls her close and laughs across her shoulder. “You’re somethin’ else, Loretta McCready,” he tells her.

She wraps her arms around his neck without thinking and breathes into his shoulder, “Thank you.” She’s sure he knows she doesn’t just mean for what he just said.

Ava and Raylan make their way over as most of the other couples leave the floor. Everyone’s heading to bed and Loretta herself stifles a yawn. Raylan is smiling big, all that exercise pushing the alcohol through his limbs and lips. When he gets close enough to Loretta, his hand moves to brush against her shoulders, like he’s not even thinking about it, like he just wants to tell her he’s there.

“I told Anna we can leave this all for the morning,” Ava says with a half-wicked grin and Boyd pulls her from Raylan’s arms, twirling her around and out and back into him. She lets out a surprised whoop and pretends to push him away when she’s back in his arms.

“Not too fast,” Loretta hears Boyd murmur, then turns to Raylan, “You want a walk back?” he asks.

Raylan shakes his head, his face sober, but not any other part of him. “We’ll be fine,” he says and she and Raylan stumble back home, arm in arm.

They pass the doctor on their way and he winks at Loretta again.

Several steps on Raylan murmurs, “He’s a funny kind of guy,” and Loretta giggles again.

“His name is Travis.”

“Huh,” Raylan replies. “I never knew that.”

 

[ ](http://norgbelulah.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/765/29537)

 

Loretta is working in the field with Boyd days later, pulling up the last of the cabbage and carrots, when Raylan comes in from the wall, the frown on his face just as deep as it had been they day they met again.

“What is it?” Boyd asks.

“Horde of dead,” Raylan growls. His eyes look disturbed. “Big. More ‘n I’ve seen since Louisville.”

“Christ,” someone breathes, though the voice sounds so strangled, Loretta can’t tell who it is.

Boyd stares at him for several seconds, almost like he’s wondering if Raylan might be joking, then his fingers wrap hard around the sickle in his hand and he tells the man to his left, “Go get everyone. Empty the arsenal and tell Ava she should get that thing out from under the crawl space. Help her if she needs it. One mother to stay behind with the children, inside the pantry, no arguments. They get to decide who.”

The man, Benny, the other ‘stiller, Loretta realizes, takes off at a run and Boyd starts walking towards the wall. Everyone follows.

Loretta falls into step next to Raylan who is checking the mag in his glock. “Someone will bring your little revolver,” he says, in a hard tone. Her eyes are wide as he continues. “‘Til then, you hold onto this and you take careful aim. Only shoot when you have the head shot. Don’t take it if you’re not sure. Careful of the kickback. Hold it with two hands.”

She almost says she knows, she isn’t a baby, she’ll be fine, but she looks into his eyes and she knows he knows that too. So she licks her lips and says, “Okay, Raylan,” and he runs his hand almost carelessly--though she knows it’s hardly that--through her hair and walks farther up to talk to Boyd.

They lean their heads close together and she watches Boyd wrap his fingers around Raylan’s wrist, hold on tight like he did to that sickle. There’s more fear in Raylan’s eyes than she’s ever seen and there’s a slight tremor in his fingers. Boyd tells Raylan something and a hard resolve comes into both their expressions.

An older man, Amos, Loretta thinks, nudges her and says, looking on at the two men, “Some things don’t change, even after all this death an’ destruction.”

“What do you mean?” she asks.

He smiles, though it’s strained and tired. “I worked with those two in the mine, when they was nothin’ but skinny boys. They was always like that, thicker ‘n thieves.”

Loretta frowns. “They worked in the mine together?”

There would have been no reason for either of them to mention it, but she can’t imagine Raylan as a miner, though he did always seem to have a bigger chip on his shoulder than a fancy lawman should. Loretta knew he was from Harlan, he told her so and she could hear it in his voice, but she assumed he got out before the mine could pull him under.

“Sure did, though Givens hated it more than most. You can just tell, you been down long enough, who can’t stomach it. But Crowder, he was always with him. Heard some boys say they was doin’ more ‘n drinkin’ together, but I always thought that was a load of shit.”

Loretta wants to ask him just what he means by that, but her words are swallowed up by a gasp when she sees the dead walking towards them.

In Lexington, running the first time, it was the very beginning and there were more dead than she could count. Later, the military came in and got rid of a bunch of them, though they were overwhelmed before they could finish them off. When she ran the second time, there were less, though a lot more than she ever saw on the road.

Outside their wall now, it was like all the dead from the city had just marched to their door. It could have been hundreds, so many, they could see them from at least a mile away, before the trees on the mountainside thinned out in the holler down below.

“That’s too many,” someone murmurs but Boyd smiles, it’s manic and wide and Loretta’s just a little bit terrified.

“Not when you see what I brought here with me,” he says and looks at Raylan.

Raylan’s frown deepens then breaks into a surprised smile for just a second as he replies, “You’re not serious.”

Ava and Benny arrive just in that moment with a heavy looking green case which they slide to the ground next to Boyd. He leans down, still wearing that crazy smile, and says, “As a heart-attack, darlin’.” And silence falls, except for the ever-nearing, rolling moan of the dead, as Boyd opens the case to reveal some kind of military-grade rocket launcher.

“Christ Almighty,” Amos says and Loretta agrees.

“How much ammo you got for that?” Raylan asks.

Boyd hefts it, almost like he’s bouncing a baby, and sets it carefully atop his shoulder, pointing at no one, he peers into the sight. “Four shells.”

“That’s a large price tag,” Raylan murmurs, hand on his empty holster. Loretta wonders if he’s even noticed.

“I had a bit put away, Raylan,” Boyd answers with a smile. “And I got a great deal on it.” Raylan doesn’t laugh.

They stand together as the others coming from further inside the compound race towards them, carrying more and more weapons. Some begin to check their ammo, pull extra aside and stow it in their pockets. “You should arc it,” Raylan says, pointing down the mountain. “Shoot three now and decimate ‘em. We’ll pick off the stragglers. Save the last for another day.”

“Raylan,” Boyd sighs, “do I come into your sphere of knowledge and tell you how to do your favorite thing in the world?” Raylan doesn’t answer. “No, I do not. Now, please, let me blow up these goddamn corpses what will kill us if they get near.”

Raylan nods, and steps aside, yelling, “Get back,” to anyone who’s close by.

Boyd grins again and in the exact same tone as Raylan had taken, cries, “Fire in the hole,” and pulls the trigger.

It’s a sucking, whooshing sound that seems to take up all the air around them as the rocket explodes from the launcher. Boyd, as Raylan advised, aims it to travel farther in an arc over the trees between them and the dead.

About fifteen or twenty break apart on impact and their parts fall still and burning. The rest in a radius of maybe ten yards or so, scream, low but somehow shrill, and continue to walk as their bodies burn. Some are consumed and fall to the ground, others walk until the fire goes out, and only moan louder.

A woman two feet behind Loretta turns and vomits into the dirt. There are more coming.

“One person every five feet across the wall and our best facing the horde,” Boyd tells Raylan, who nods. “Everyone grab a weapon and ammo, and extra if it seems we can spare. If you know yourself to be a terrible shot, you’re a runner. Talk to Raylan.” Ava hands him a shell and he loads the launcher up again.

“You’re gonna shoot three?” Raylan asks.

“If I have to, and the last if I absolutely have to,” he answers. “They’re gonna fan out soon, closer they get. It’ll be a waste if I don’t fire ‘em off soon.”

“Do it, then,” Raylan growls and counts off ten people, Loretta included. “Get your shit and follow me.”

Loretta scrambles to the pile of guns and one or two crossbows and finds the revolver the older man out of Lexington had thrown her. She takes it and a box of bullets she knows to be the right size and runs to catch up with Raylan.

He’s chosen most of the younger, more inexperienced to come with him. She knows it’s the smart thing, but it smarts just a little, until he looks at her and she sees the fear still in his eyes. She wants to tell him it’ll be okay.

Instead she says, “You want your gun back?”

He tries to smile. “You hold onto it. You got another place you can keep it?”

She shoves the revolver in her pocket and tightened her grip on the glock. “How’s that?”

“Just fine,” he replies.

They climb up to the top of the wall, where there’s a narrow ledge to walk on. He puts her on an out of the way corner, though he reminds her, “Boyd’s right. They’re gonna fan out. Eventually, they’ll come at us from all sides. Works out for us, ‘cause we can pick ‘em off as they come, but we still have to be careful, okay?”

She nods and he leaves her with a hard squeeze of her hand. She’s within close range of two others and sight of three on either side. They don’t speak. They just look out over the wall.

They hear Boyd’s shout and the rocket launch twice more, followed by a whoop. Raylan runs back past them, calling, “How many left?”

Boyd calls back, “Eighty or so of these rotten assholes.” The man next to her laughs softly as Boyd continues, “Keep an eye out, everybody. They’re comin’ ‘round.”

Ten minutes later, Loretta shoots her first dead man.

Fifteen minutes later, she’s shot five. Three hours later, she’s shot seven and dusk is falling over the hills. The night goes on.

Some people, Ava included, leave the wall and bring out food for everyone. Boyd walks the perimeter and talks to everyone, makes sure they’ve got plenty of ammo. Loretta doesn’t see Raylan and when she asks, Boyd touches her shoulder lightly and says, “There’s a lot comin’ up from the ravine. I’m heading there now.”

“Be careful,” she tells him.

Loretta watches the woods from the wall, but it’s hard to see very far into the shadows.

She doesn’t know how long it is from when she talks to Boyd to when she sees the darkest shadow move. It’s small and she’s tired. She doesn’t think it’s anything until she hears a scrabbling up the wall and then the little girl is on her.

Maybe it was four or five when it died and it’s got what once was a pretty dress hanging from its emaciated frame. It’s growling like an animal and it moves faster than one Loretta’s ever seen. She remembers wondering if it’s because the thing’s so small.

Loretta cries out, involuntarily, more out of surprise than fear. The tiny girl’s foot knocks the glock from her hand and it climbs on top of her as Loretta falls back and off the wall. The wind is knocked out of her lungs when she hits the ground and its tiny teeth, made sharp by whatever else it’s been eating, dig into her forearm as she braces it forward, trying to keep the thing away from her face.

She doesn’t think she screams words, and she realizes as its teeth sink further into her flesh that help won’t come soon enough. She thrusts her other hand into her coat pocket and draws the revolver out. She hears footsteps, thudding hard against the ground, coming up behind her, racing down from the wall. More than one person is shouting her name.

She presses the revolver against the temple of what was once a baby girl and pulls the trigger. She cocks it as fast as she can and pulls again for good measure. The thing’s jaw finally releases as whatever is making it go leaves it for good. Loretta is covered in gore, the thing’s brains and its congealed, black blood, and she’s shaking, staring at her arm.

It’s Boyd who comes around to the front of her and pulls that baby’s body off her, pushing it hard to the side as his hands come around her face. “Where did it get you?” he demands.

She stares at him, at his dark, intense eyes, wide and full of fear. It takes her what seems like a long time to answer. “Just on my arm,” she says and holds it out to him like he might want to see. He calls for the doctor and for Raylan and he yells at someone to start ripping strips of fabric from whatever they can find.

Loretta looks down at the mangle those tiny teeth made of her flesh and she frowns at it, at how red it is and angry and how the blood’s coming off it slow like molasses. “It’s not so bad,” she murmurs and Boyd makes a sound like she’s punched him.

“It’s poison, honey,” he tells her and presses his mouth to it, sucking hard at the wound and spitting it fast out into the dirt.

It’s not a big bite, but he keeps sucking at it. “It don’t hurt, Boyd,” she says, but he doesn’t let her pull away.

“It numbs you up, baby,” he says between breaths, between spitting out her blood. “We got to get it out of you. You ain’t seen anyone bit before?”

She frowns and stops trying to pull away. She’s tired and his hands are hard and tight. “They always get ate,” she says. “They get pulled down and run over and you never see ‘em again.”

The doctor comes then and Boyd gets out of the way, saying, “I got as much as I could.” He shifts and puts himself behind Loretta, she leans back into him, feeling heavy and slow, and he wraps his arms around her shoulders.

The doctor looks at him. “You should lie down.”

Boyd’s arms tighten. “I will,” he says, “when I have to.”

The doctor checks her eyes for something with a flashlight. The light hurts her and she twists in Boyd’s arms. The doctor’s lips tighten and he presses his fingers to her neck. “You’re too thready,” he murmurs and she laughs. She doesn’t know what that means.

She wants to ask where Raylan is, but her mouth isn’t working right and all she hears is little mewling sounds. Nothing hurts but she feels so strange. Boyd’s hands are on her head and across her chest, holding her still, but then he makes a strangled noise and the doctor takes her up as Boyd turns away and retches into the ground.

“You swallowed too much,” the doctor tells him, then Ava is there, her eyes grave, placing her hands across his back. She looks at Loretta who wants to reach for her.

“He’s comin’, honey,” she says. “He’s racin’ for you.”

And then Raylan is there and she cries at him again, her lips and teeth and tongue not working. His eyes are terrified as he falls to his knees beside her. She wants to tell him she’s okay, but she’s scared and all her muscles feel twitchy and wrong.

“I’m here,” he says and his eyes fall to her arm. He looks at the doctor then leans over her and stares hard into her eyes. “You’re gonna be fine, honey. I know you heard what I told this asshole the day we came here. I lived through this and so will you.”

She starts choking because she can’t swallow her spit and the doctor flips her on her stomach, holding her arm off the ground. “We have to move her.” he says. “I need a sharp knife, the clearest booze you have, a basin of water, soap, and bandages from my kit. Where do you want her?”

“My place,” Boyd groans into the ground. “Go get what he said,” he tells someone Loretta can’t see.

She blacks out when Raylan picks her up.

 

[ ](http://norgbelulah.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/765/29727)

 

She wakes when they slice open the wound and she screams when they pour the alcohol over it.

It’s Raylan who holds her down and it’s Boyd she can see across the room, on the extra bed roll, propped up weakly and staring at them. His mouth is hanging open like he doesn’t have the strength to keep it shut and there are tears plain on his face.

The doctors fingers are hard against the tender tissue as he cleans it. His eyes are grave when Loretta can catch a look at them, when she cranes her neck too see what he’s done to her arm.

“They cauterized mine in Louisville,” Raylan says.

“She can burn through the poison she took in or she can spike an even higher fever with an infection from a third degree burn. They give you antibiotics?” the doctor asks, his voice so much harsher than she’s ever heard.

“Yes.”

“We don’t have any of those. She’s got to do this on her own and she might not die from just the poison. It’ll last longer, because the cauterization would destroy it, but she won’t survive if half her arm is infected.”

Loretta doesn’t care. She’d rather they just cut the damn thing off because it _hurts_. It hurts so much now. She wants to tell them, but she can’t completely make the words yet, so her moans are half-formed and sound far too much like the dead to her ears.

Raylan makes shushing noises in her ear and after a while, as the doctor begins to wrap up her arm, she lets them over take her, like the dead took Glen and that other baby. She lets her muscles relax and she’s heavy in his arms. Raylan’s hand is on her forehead, then her cheek, pushing her hair back, and it’s cool against her skin.

“It’s hot,” she murmurs, finally finding speech, and he presses his lips to her temple. “I’m hot, Raylan. It hurts.”

“I know, honey,” he says desperately. “You’re gonna be fine, though. I’ve got you.”

 

They lay her down in Boyd and Ava’s bed, they take her clothes and put her in an old nightgown of Ava’s. They tell her to sleep and it comes easy enough because she’s still so tired, but the dreams come with it.

She dreams the room is on fire, that her arm catches aflame and it consumes her like the dead. She dreams of that little girl and of her daddy’s face on on a walking corpse.

She dreams they bury her in the ground even though she screams at them not to. That’s how the dead rise. They say she’s burned up, she won’t walk if she’s burned, but she doesn’t believe them and she screams and screams at them to stop.

She wakes in Raylan’s arms and his eyes are full of terror. She’s sweating buckets and she hurts all over. Her arm is on fire.

He looks at her like he barely recognizes her and he says, “You been sleepin’, unconscious,” he says the word like the doctor told it to him, “for three days.”

Her eyes widen and then the hallucinations begin.

She’s not sure about them at first. It’s just that the room begins to wave, like heat coming off a blacktop road. And she doesn’t think that’s so strange, because it so hot. It’s so hot she can’t stop talking about it. “Ain’t you hot?” she whispers to Raylan, her voice dry and mangled.

He brings her a cup of water and frowns at her. He shakes his head. “You’re sick, honey. You remember what happened?”

She does, so she nods a little, then looks across the room again. The waves are larger now, so hot, and the room, the walls and the furniture, even the fire itself, is melting. She turns back to tell Raylan, because he might want to know, and she lets out a strangled cry, pitching forward and grasping hard at him.

He’s wounded, just on his arm, just like her, but it’s deeper, older, purple and angry, festering and boiling up it’s poison and black, black blood. “No, no, no,” she says desperately, “when did you get bit?” She scrubs at it with her fingers, tearing at it with her nails. “Get it off,” she cries, “wash it out, _Raylan_.”

He’s calling her name, but he’s not listening to her. He calls to someone in the other room, “Go get Travis.” She’s forgotten who that is. She doesn’t want him. Raylan’s going to die, it’s black and green and growing larger the more she tears at it. Her hands are slick now and she’s sobbing for him to help her.

“I’m fine,” he insists. “Loretta, honey, please. There’s nothing there.”

She turns to look up at him, but her eyes catch on something red on his belly. She stares at the stain grow and grow, seep bright red, faster than when she watched it in Mags Bennett’s living room, before she put down that gun.

“You’re shot,” she sobs, pressing her hands to the wound, and Raylan’s mouth falls open. His eyes fill with despair. “Please, please,” she chokes on the words and her tears. “You can’t--can’t do this. _Raylan, please_.”

He pulls her up then and her hands away from his middle as the doctor rushes in. “I’m not doing anything, sweetheart,” he tells her. “I ain’t shot, I ain’t bit. All right?”

But there’s blood everywhere and Loretta pulls herself from his grasp, pushing back down on the wound. She starts tearing the bandages off her own arm, desperate for something to staunch the blood. She stares up at the doctor and says, “ _Help me_.”

The doctor looks between them then kneels quickly, taking her face in his hands. He does it fast and sure and strong enough that she can’t pull away.

Her eyes are drawn up to a bloody cut, deep and thick, on his forehead, rounding out into his hair where it’s become matted and dark. It’s shaped like a hoofprint. She raises a hand to touch it lightly with two fingers and they come away red.

“It’s everywhere,” she whines and the room is still melting. She can’t catch her breath.

“You’re hallucinating, Loretta,” the doctor tells her and his fingers tighten across the back of her head. “No one is hurt. No one is dying.” His eyes are very blue and she sees calm in them.

She drops her hand from his head, but when she looks down at it, she still sees blood. It’s traced in fine lines across her clothes, dug into her fingernails and she whimpers and looks at him. “Don’ lie to me,” she says.

“Honey, you clawed Raylan’s arm open,” he says and she looks over and all she see is the bite and the bulletwound and the light going out of Raylan’s eyes. She’s crying again but the doctor pulls her eyes back to him. “You’re sick from the bite. You’ve got a fever, a bad one. Raylan is fine. Tell me you understand what I’m saying.”

She shakes her head. “Why won’t you help me?” She doesn’t understand at all.

He clutches her like he wants to shake her and his voice breaks when he says, “Jesus Christ, I am _trying_ , Loretta.” He pulls his bag over to him and says to Raylan, “Hold onto her for me.”

Raylan reaches for her and she still can’t catch her breath. There is blood pooled all over the floor now and Loretta goes willingly, pressing her red hands to his side. “You’re gonna bleed out,” she cries softly. “You’re dead, you’re dead, you’re dead,” she moans.

He pulls her close and she can’t fight him. She presses her face into his shoulder and he rubs soothingly up and down her back. He tells her, “I’m not, honey. I’m not.”

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” the doctor is muttering. “Never this bad. Not so soon.”

Raylan tightens his grip on her. “She still wasn’t that strong,” he says. “Not after a full year in those city compounds. I walked through the Lexington Courthouse, Travis. They were bed to bed in some of those rooms, no wonder everyone died.”

“Shut up,” the doctor says and comes around to look in Loretta’s eyes again. “We’re not going to talk like that.”

She looks at the doctor’s worried face and she feels better caught up in Raylan’s arms. She can breathe now and she thinks, frowning, that he should have done it by now--died--if he was going to. The air is still nothing but waves of heat, but the room hasn’t disintegrated around them. “What’s wrong?” she asks.

“Boyd said, she told him she’d never seen anyone with the bite,” Raylan murmurs quietly.

“They was all eaten up,” she adds, carelessly, like she told Boyd. “When there’s dead, there’s too many to run from.” She sighs, “Til you run into Raylan.”

The doctor just looks at her sadly. She almost smiles at him. That bloody hoofprint is gone. She’s tired again, too tired to be afraid, too tired to hate the heat, though her arm is hurting something fierce.

She closes her eyes and the last thing she hears is Raylan say, “I still can’t believe I just found her.”

 

When she wakes they pour water down her throat and try for some food, but she vomits it all into a basin the doctor has ready.

Raylan isn’t there. It’s Ava this time and Loretta blurts, “Who beat you like that?” before she realizes, like before, that they can’t see it. Everything’s hot and her mind is so slow and Loretta cries because Ava’s face is nothing but black and blue and swollen.

Ava shakes her head gently and leans in close, whispering, “I’m all right, honey. You’re gonna lose all that water we just gave you, you keep carryin’ on like that. Everyone’s fine.”

They give her some kind of funny tea after that and she doesn’t sleep so much as she drifts through a sea made of the melted room and the oppressive heat. They’ve bandaged up her arm again and sharp pains run up and down it sometimes, though not enough to jolt her out of her half-waking stupor.

Sometimes she doesn’t know the people who come in and out and she can’t remember where she is or what happened. But they smile like they know her and she lets them do as they please. Sometimes she’ll remember them as they’re speaking to her and she’ll smile at them, though her skin feels dry and brittle even across her face, and she’ll cry again because she’d forgotten.

They tell her it’s all right, but she finds it hard to believe them.

That is the first week.

In the second week, she knows everybody and she hates them.

Her arm is on fire and everything hurts so much more. They give her a different tea and it tastes worse and it doesn’t help. She tries to throw it in the doctor’s face and he smiles at her when she manages it. “You’re getting strong again,” he says and she tells him to fuck off.

When Raylan is there, she asks him where he was when that thing tore her arm open, why he wasn't there. She refuses to let him touch her. She doesn’t see, doesn’t care about the guilt across his face.

She hears, from the next room, Boyd tell him she doesn't mean it, would never ask that, say that, if she was in her right mind. He can't think that way. It won’t help her. But she takes heavy breaths and doesn't know what’s right or wrong or what she would do or think if she wasn't so hot. Her tears burn her and she can’t think.

Her arm is a furnace on its own. She asks him, begs him, to cut it off once a day. She knows it hurts him, but it hurts her more and he should just cut it off.

After that, she becomes consumed with the idea that she's slowly turning into one of them. That she's dying from the inside out. That her hate will consume her, she must be evil now to say such things.

“No,” he says. He’s forgiven her. “This ain't one of them movies, honey. The bite don't kill, you know that.”

But she shakes her head and says he's lying. He shouldn’t do that to protect her. Then she pleads with him, she says maybe he's right, but if she does turn, he's got to put her down.

“You’ve got to do it,” she cries. She makes him promise. “Promise,” she says, “ _promise_.”

And he does so she'll sleep.

 

The fever spikes and she loses whatever strength her anger and fear had given her. They’re able to feed her, but she sleeps for hours afterwards. She can’t think to form words, can’t concentrate.

She only gets flashes of the hallucinations now, the waking dreams. Boyd comes to see her. He sits on her bed, just at the edge, grave-faced and looking tired. He tells her he was ill, on account of the poison, he couldn’t be in the room without retching. She frowns and traces the outline of a bullet hole in his chest with a shaky finger. She knows its not really there.

He looks into her fearful eyes and says quietly, “That’s where Raylan got me, when he first came back home. It just missed my heart.” He speaks more fondly than she can account for.

“Raylan?” she whispers, voice not coming any louder.

“I couldn’t believe it either,” Boyd says with a smile. “But he did warn me, with a great deal of sincerity. And I was the criminal, you understand. And I had a gun. I thanked him for it later.”

She thinks about what the old miner, Amos, said. What she thinks he was saying. She licks her dry lips.

“You’re tired, honey,” he says and gets up to leave.

She puts her hand on his and he pauses. “You love him,” she says and he sits back down.

The blood from his wound seeps slow to her eyes and she wonders if that’s how it really was when it happened. She puts her hand back on it, but he pulls it off gently and down into his lap. He looks at her like she’s too smart for her own good and says, “We do.”

She frowns again then tries to say, “If I--”

His hand tightens around hers, hard enough to hurt. He tells her, “I won’t hear you talk like that, Loretta,” in the most dangerous tone she’s ever heard him use.

She’s just so tired and so hot and she doesn’t know what she’s thinking. She thinks this must be hell, she can barely remember what life was like before. She shakes her head and turns away, too hot to even produce tears.

He kisses her forehead and leaves her to sleep.

The doctor comes to play her music on his guitar. She blinks tiredly at him and tries to smile.

He plays her the Tennessee Waltz again then asks, “What else do you want to hear?”

She shifts and leans her head against her pillow, thinking, then says weakly, “Willie Nelson.”

He grins. “Really? Which one? Blue Eyes Cryin’?”

She shakes her head. “Always,” she whispers.

“Always On My Mind?” he asks and she nods. He starts it up slow and keeps it that way, dragging it out. His voice is clear, like his eyes, and she closes hers and just listens.

She must have fallen asleep, because when she stirs, he’s gone and Raylan is on the floor next to her bed, his head propped up by the mattress.

“All this sleepin’,” he says, “I did that too, near the end of it. It means you’re healin’ up, honey.”

She smiles, but thinks she’s forgotten what hope feels like too. She’s so hot and she can see how he hurts for her. She pats his head, just because it’s within reach and he huffs at her.

“Tell me,” she whispers and slides further down the bed so she can look in his eyes.

“About my bite?” he asks frowning and she nods. His lips tighten, his jaw works and she knows he doesn’t want to, but she just looks at him expectantly and he sighs. “I was on a supply run. Big place like the Downs, there was a lot of people, but no space for farming. Not like here. So we’d go out. We ransacked the Walmarts and the Costco, but this was months into it, we had to go farther afield. It was on the way back we ran into a bunch of them, we got out, but one of us died and two got bit, including me. Just here,” he says, pointing to his forearm where Loretta had seen that festering mess, where she had clawed at it, had torn up his skin. There’s a bandage there now, white and clean, and no bite, but she remembers everything. “Just like yours,” he murmurs.

“Sorry,” she says and he shakes his head.

“I’d seen bites before, so I sucked what I could out of it myself while they drove us back to the Downs. They had an infirmary set up, because what was left of the army was still hanging around and we’d got supplies from one of the hospitals close by. There was an army doc still there, cut it open, like Travis did, but then they set a hot knife to it and gave me a course of antibiotics.”

His eyes are full of regret as he tells her, “I had hallucinations for one day and it was the most terrifying experience of my entire life, but I never saw anyone die and I never saw any blood. I burned for two weeks and I was fine. They let me go home after the first one. I’m so sorry, Loretta, I never knew it would be this way for you.”

She frowns at him and says, “What were you gonna do t’ make it diff’rent?”

“I don’t know, honey,” he sighs and she doesn’t understand the guilt he carries with him.

Loretta has never thought any of the deaths she’s seen were anything like her own fault. She couldn’t have prevented the dead, she couldn’t have saved anybody. She supposes it comes from whatever drives people to be lawmen or soldiers. She’s not sure she’s got the stamina to look at the world like she’s the only thing stopping its destruction.

She draws her hand, still shaky and weak, up to his face, tracing her fingers across his hairline and down to his jaw. “Where was home?” she asks. When he frowns like he doesn’t understand, she forces out, “They let you go home.”

“To Winona,” he answers immediately, then doesn’t speak again for a while. She waits for him and eventually he says, “My wife. She was livin’ with her sister In Louisville with... our baby girl. I was on my way there when they rose. We got to the Downs and we were okay. We did what we could. They let me go home to them and they sat with me while I slept for a goddamn week. Winona would set her on my chest when she was tired and I’d wake up with her there, sleepin’ like the world hadn’t ended a year after she was born.”

“What was her name?”

“Olive,” he says with a soft smile. “‘Cause her mother and I could never decide on anything but food and sex.” Loretta laughs and he looks mildly embarrassed he phrased it that way.

He doesn’t say anything else for a while, and he must think Loretta’s asleep, as her eyes have fallen shut, when he does speak again. “She was gonna be just like you,” he says to her quietly. “My little girl. I could just tell.”

She stirs and blinks her eyes open at him so he huffs again, softer now and continues, “She woulda been a real Harlan girl. No matter where we raised her.”

 

[ ](http://norgbelulah.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/765/29537)

 

Loretta sleeps for another week. Her arms stops hurting and the world cools down, but she’s weak as a kitten. The doctor yells at her when she tries to get out of bed. “Are you crazy?” he says. “You haven’t walked in a month, Loretta. You’ve got to take it easy, even if the fever’s gone.”

She hardens her jaw at him. “Then help me back to my house,” she says. “I can’t be stayin’ in Boyd and Ava’s bed no more. They--they need it.” She really doesn’t want to explain what she’s thinking they might need it for.

It’s a shame Ava enters in the next moment, because she thought the doctor was about to agree.

“Absolutely not,” Ava says firmly. “You stay here ‘til you’re well, honey. Completely well. Boyd and I are just fine, all right?”

The doctor looks at her like he won something. She still can’t think of him as Travis.

The two of them stay and help her walk around the room a bit, each lending a supporting shoulder, but she tires after one circuit and they make her go back to the bed. She sleeps through the afternoon.

When she wakes, Raylan is there and they eat dinner together. The next day the doctor takes off her bandage for good and there’s nothing there but a pink scar. He grins at her and she thanks him with tears in her eyes.

He ducks his head and replies, “I wish there was more I could have done. There’s so much we don’t know about what they are, what they do to you. I didn’t want to do anything that would make it worse.”

She thinks he probably couldn’t have, but she doesn’t tell him that.

 

It takes her two weeks to get strong enough to get herself to the Barbecue for dinner. It just so happens to be Christmas dinner--or the Winter Solstice, as Boyd insists on calling it to prove something or other to Raylan--that is her welcome back to the community at large.

Everyone seems real pleased to see her. She gets claps and people standing and cheering when she comes in and she goes beet red and has to sit down before her legs collapse under her. Raylan brings her her food and when the dancing starts she curls up on the bench, watching until her eyelids are too heavy to keep open.

She shrugs Raylan off when he offers to carry her home, standing slowly and saying, “I _can_ walk.”

Before Raylan can answer, Boyd comes over, clearly more buzzed than she’s ever seen him and draws his hand up around the back of Raylan’s neck, standing close, crowding in. “It was always the world we was livin’ in, darlin’,” he says, as if responding to something Raylan said only seconds before. “What’s to stop us now, when the old one’s all but gone?”

Raylan’s eyes are wide and it looks like he wants to pull away, but just can’t. “I don’t know, Boyd. You know I never trusted you, far as I could throw you. Not sure the world ending’s gonna change that too much.”

He pulls away but Boyd grins at him anyway and replies, “You startin’ that again?”

Raylan works his jaw. “What?”

“Thinkin’ you can lie to me and I’ll believe you.” When Raylan doesn’t reply, Boyd tells him quietly, “There ain’t nothin’ left you and I need to hide from each other, Raylan. Why do you keep tryin’ to?”

Something uncertain rolls across Raylan’s expression, but his eyes clear and he backs up a step before he answers, “Habit, I suppose.”

He turns then and helps Loretta back home. He doesn’t say a word until the next morning.

 

[ ](http://norgbelulah.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/765/29727)

 

Ava comes over to trim Loretta’s hair. It needs to be washed properly anyway, after her long months of sponge bath recovery. She cuts a few inches off and they sweep them into the fire.

Afterwards, she stays and teaches Loretta how to darn socks, as she’s still not strong enough to spend her time doing anything more intensive.

Loretta took home ec for a few years in school, so she’s familiar with sewing, and she finds the task both diverting and soothing enough she’s fairly excited about spending her ample free time with the pile of old socks Ava’s brought her. There’s not so many clothes to spare that they can throw anything away, but no one wants holes in their socks either.

Ava’s just about to leave when Raylan comes in. She’s got her coat in hand and they’re standing by the door. Raylan is obviously distracted, he’s got his rifle with him.

“Everything okay?” Loretta asks as they step back to let him in.

He leans the weapon next to the door and says, absently, “Yeah, just two dead tryin’ to climb up the ravine. They were moving slow, ‘cause of the cold, so we got ‘em easy enough.”

He takes off his coat, then, as if he’s done it once a day for years, leans in and kisses Ava.

Its not fully on the mouth, but near enough that when he pulls away, clearly as startled as she, that he stares at her and says, “I’m sorry?” like he has no idea what he should be thinking or saying about it.

Her face breaks out into a delighted grin and she shakes her head at him in amusement. “Oh, Raylan,” she says, patting his cheek. “Don’t be.” She pulls on her coat and says, breezily, “Well, I gotta go. Boyd’ll be by later for the rounds.”

 

They walk the perimeter at night to make sure the snow hasn’t done any real damage, that there’s nothing trying to get in. Everyone who’s able takes a turn, even in winter. That night, and more than is really necessary, it’s Raylan and Boyd’s turn.

When they return, dusted with snow and blowing hot breath onto their hands, Boyd stays a minute to warm up before braving the weather to his own place. He gives Raylan a questioning look, which is returned with a shake of Raylan’s head, before he leaves. He goes out the door with a small, understanding smile on his face.

Loretta turns to Raylan after the door shuts. “Are you not going back with him on account of me?”

“Excuse me?” Raylan asks, startled.

She plants her hands on her hips. “I am fine, Raylan. I will be fine, by myself, for one night. For a few nights a week, if that’s what you want,” she tells him.

He just stares at her, frozen in the middle of pulling off his coat. “Loretta--” he starts.

But she doesn’t let him. “Go catch up with him, Raylan.”

He works his jaw and looks at the door, then back to her. He raises a finger. “We’re gonna talk about this,” he says and pulls his coat back on.

“If that’ll make you feel better,” she returns sweetly as he steps outside.

 

[ ](http://norgbelulah.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/765/29537)

 

They don’t talk about it.

It’s fine with Loretta. She just watches them, all three, together, and is happy Raylan was able to let go of whatever it was that was holding him back.

There’s something easy between the three of them now that’s not hard to notice. Raylan’s smile comes easier than ever and they are free with their glances and their hands, though they’re as private as they always were about the really obvious things. There’s a deep camaraderie between them now, an intimacy that’s eye catching and beautiful.

Loretta finds herself thinking about it as she sits again at a party, a mostly full jar of shine set in front of her. It’s spring now, and though there’s not much to spare from the winter stores, they have a celebration anyway.

They’re up and about in the crowd, Ava able to cajole Raylan into dancing so much easier than before and Boyd showing a few of the children what clogging’s all about. He keeps his eyes on his students for the most part, but sometimes they stray across the room and he’ll smile just a bit bigger.

The doctor sits himself down next to her as she’s watching them.

“You let someone else play that thing?” she asks jokingly.

He smiles and replies, “Turns out Laura might be a little better than me at it anyway. And I wanted a break.”

Loretta smiles and offers him her drink. He takes it, hissing through his teeth after the swallow. “Still not used to it yet,” he says.

“You’ll get there,” she tells him. “Gotta give it time.”

[ ](http://norgbelulah.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/765/30006)


End file.
